Fall

The monoprint Fall, created in the artist-in-residence studio at Dartmouth College, Hanover, New England, represents a transient yet vivid memory of the season spent walking and re-walking a trail I took to the studio on a daily basis. The work arose spontaneously from a direct and instinctive wish to replicate the ghost imprints left on the trail by the wet and dry weather of that autumn. It also represented a sensationally hopeful political transition of what seemed to be the growth of hope within US thinking at the time. The autumn of 2008 was momentous, full of changing colour in foliage and skyscape. Fall was made during the quiet nights spent in the studio on my own, listening to my own silence and rhythm and at times interrupted by listening to music. This one-off mural work was made as part of various experimental works in print created during the residency. The work, painted over after my residency, now only exists in photographs. This print collage afforded me the opportunity to continue the exploration of movement and the body on a monumental scale, activating a range of references to different cultural frameworks. It extended my attempt throughout my work to create dynamic and intricate relationships in material structures: in this case between the leaf elements and the whole through accumulation, layering, spacing and contrasts of colour and shade – creating the illusion of body volume in two dimensions. The mural significantly expanded my engagement with line and brush drawings on scrolls, by relating physically and emotionally to the site-specificity and my experience of the place during the autumn residency